[Chrono Trigger Novel - Episode 65] A Borrowed Smile
Dust vanished from the canopy in the light of their passage.
Marle held the bundle against her chest and watched the yellow sky turn blue. Sunlight lay on the sea. Every roof had its own color. As the Epoch descended, she could distinguish people walking between the fairground tents. Someone offered a steaming skewer to a companion.
People could still eat things that hot.
She closed her lips at the thought. In the space of a few days, she kept forgetting what she had once taken for granted. Lucca landed in a clearing away from the square. The canopy opened onto the smell of grass. Marle's clothes still smelled of metal from the distant future.
Magus climbed out last. A passerby slowed at the sight of his scythe, then hurried on. Before the path narrowed, Lucca turned to him.
“Cover that, will you?”
He said nothing, but turned the blade inside his cloak.
The bell rang in the square.
Marle stopped. The same bell. Two children crouched where she had collided with Crono and dropped her pendant. They were drawing lines on the ground and arguing about who had stepped over one. She went around them.
Lucca did not speak. She studied the signs hanging from the tents. Someone lost a balloon and reached after it; Marle looked up too. Its thin string climbed into the sky. Beyond it, a dark shape hung over the distant horizon. It had reached this age as well. A man pointed, while his companion bought a sweet without looking.
Marle lowered her eyes to the tents.
Norstein Bekkler's name was written over one entrance. Inside, a head turned in midair. Two gloved hands appeared beside the smiling face. There was no body.
She almost stepped backward. But the hands held no weapons. They were applauding.
“Visitors! Whose face would you like to take away?”
“Crono's.”
His name escaped too quickly. Bekkler's smile did not change.
“That young man's doll? I don't generally hand out someone else's likeness when its owner isn't here. I'll make an exception today.”
Lucca stepped forward.
“What do we have to do?”
Forty Silver Points, followed by a game of imitation. Bekkler drew a circle in the air with one finger. They could have the doll even if they failed, but the longer they lasted, the less he would charge.
Marle opened the purse. Coins, but none of the fair's points. Lucca touched her hand.
“I know where.”
She led Marle across the square. A round machine swayed with its arms raised. A child ventured toward its feet until an adult caught him. Lucca watched the reach of its fist and handed Marle her bag.
“Gato. Beat him, and you win points.”
She stepped inside the line. The machine approached with a tuneful noise. As one arm extended, she ducked and slipped beneath its returning swing. A gunshot cracked. Sparks jumped from the rounded body. Soon the machine halted and sounded a ridiculous note of defeat.
The children laughed.
Lucca collected fifteen points and stepped back inside the line. This time a fist brushed the edge of her cap. She straightened it and opened the distance again. Marle closed her mouth on an unfinished cheer. After the third bout, sweat had gathered on Lucca's glasses. Before returning the bag, Marle wiped the moisture away with her sleeve.
“That'll do,” Lucca said.
Magus stood in the shade of a distant tent. His face gave no indication of what he thought of the spectacle.
Back at Bekkler's, they paid forty points. A small bell rang.
Crono walked out of the darkness.
Marle took a step. Lucca stopped her by catching her bag strap. His feet touched the floor, but no weight seemed to shift inside his boots. Not a strand of red hair stirred.
It was the doll.
Even the headband and the folds of his clothes were right. Searching for a difference, Marle came to the eyes. They faced her without recognizing her.
“Who's playing?”
Bekkler's hands fluttered between them. Before Lucca could volunteer, Marle slipped off her bag. She entrusted her with the egg as well.
“I will.”
She stood on the mark. Bekkler wagged a gloved finger: wait for the signal. Move too soon, and it would count against her.
The doll raised its left arm.
Marle lifted hers, then caught herself just before the bell. She lowered it a fraction and raised it again. Bekkler laughed, but did not stop the game.
The right arm next. Then both hands beside the face in a gesture of surprise. She watched the doll's fingertips. Remembering Crono as he had been would make her late. She had to watch the wood and cloth in front of her.
The doll held its stomach and laughed.
No sound came. Only its shoulders moved. Marle put her hands over her stomach and opened her mouth. Bekkler rang the bell again.
She had to pretend to laugh.
She bent, lifted the corners of her mouth, shook her shoulders. Her eyes burned. The doll had already moved on. It raised its right hand. She raised her left.
Two short chimes.
“And that's your lot!”
She lowered her arm. Salt touched her tongue. She did not want to find out whether she had bitten her lip or whether tears had reached it.
Bekkler named his price. Lucca counted out coins. Marle had not lasted to the end, but they could afford the charge. The final coin settled onto the floating palm.
“I'll send it to his house. Crono's house, mind. Don't collect the wrong face!”
The doll withdrew into the dark. Marle stopped herself from following. They would not be carrying it out of this tent. Lucca returned the bundle, and she took it in both hands.
Outside, someone asked whether the game had been fun. Marle pretended not to hear.
*
They visited a shop before going to the house. Marle bought ten new arrows and bound them with the two remaining in her quiver. Lucca replenished her ammunition and chose dry bandages and rope. They added thick cloth and a small parcel of food. The shopkeeper asked whether they were going far.
“Into the mountains,” Marle said. She did not say which ones.
At Crono's door, knocking took a long time. Magus stayed outside the fence. Lucca began to enter as she usually would, glanced at Marle, and withdrew her hand. In the end, Marle knocked. She felt the grain against her knuckles.
“It's open!”
The house smelled of a freshly cleaned floor. A little flag stirred by the window. Marle wiped the earth from her boots. On the stairs, the cat recognized Lucca and stood. Then it looked past them at the open door.
Crono's mother appeared upstairs.
“Lucca! And Marle. Come on up.”
One stair creaked. Lucca placed her foot on the edge of the next: the step of someone who knew which boards would speak. Marle followed, pressing the egg inside her clothes.
Crono stood in his room.
This time she did not stop. The doll was beside the desk. It looked more like him here than it had in the tent. The length of the bed and the height of the doorway made that face familiar.
His mother was folding clothes on the end of the bed.
“How is Crono?”
“He's…” Lucca began.
His mother looked up with a smile. Marle tightened her hand around the egg, then hurriedly loosened it.
“He's doing well.”
Marle could not look at her. Sunlight stretched across the floor beneath the window. Their travel-stained clothes looked pitiful in that brightness. His mother laid the folded garment on her knees.
“I hope he isn't making trouble for you. Tell him to behave himself.”
Lucca nodded. Marle could do nothing. Trouble: she saw three people sent away from the palace, and light closing behind them. He had not returned, but his mother was here, folding his clothes.
“Ma'am,” Lucca said.
“Yes?”
Lucca closed her mouth once before looking toward the desk.
“May we borrow the doll?”
His mother glanced at it, a little surprised. Someone had just sent it over, she said. Finding that face in his empty room had given her quite a start. She laughed. Marle tried to laugh with her and gave up.
“Of course. Mind you don't drop it.”
Lucca took its shoulders. Marle supported its legs. It was lighter than she expected. Weight that would have shifted differently in a person's body hung obediently between their arms. As they turned its head clear of the doorframe, its cheek brushed Marle's sleeve.
There was no warmth.
They covered the face with cloth. His mother held the door. The cat watched from the bottom of the stairs. Looking down at it, Marle almost missed a step. Lucca stopped with her.
“Slowly.”
Her voice was very quiet.
At the front door, his mother called after them.
“Take care of yourselves.”
Marle bowed her head. Even after the door had closed, she did not put down what she was carrying. Magus stepped away from the fence. He looked at the covered face, then at Lucca.
Marle did not hand the doll to him. She and Lucca carried it all the way to the clearing. They laid it on the cockpit floor between the seats and secured it with rope. Twice, Marle checked that its folded arms would not catch beneath the canopy.
Lucca took the central seat.
Marle tried the words she had heard in the bedroom. He's doing well. She closed her teeth before any sound escaped. The cloth around the egg was warm now. Her own warmth.
The Epoch rose. Crono's roof grew smaller among the others. Marle watched until she could no longer distinguish it. Only then did she turn and check that the rope at her feet had not come loose.
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